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[lojban] Re: Usage of lo and le

On 5/11/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:

On 5/11/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You're responding to the only two comments made by me that don't focus
> on my point - that is, you've skimmed over my point entirely. The
> paragraph starting with "Not by your rules. Here..." outlines my
> point, and I would appreciate a response to it, as I think that it
> shows clearly that there is something amiss with the current usage of
> {ro}.

I think I gave my response more than once. {lo ro cribe} refers to all bears.
Nothing that can relevantly be said to be a bear is left out by it. I
don't know
how else to explain it, but obviously I'm not making myself understood by
you since what you call my rules are not my rules.


We're sitting in a room filled with bears, which is in a zoo filled
with bears, in a forest filled with bears - whatever. We've been
talking about the bears in the zoo for the past hour - their past,
their future, bears that we may own, whatever. Suddenly, I want to
talk about "all bears that have ever existed":

{e'u mi'o casnu lo ro cribe poi pu ja ca zasti}

This suggests that, of the "bears that can be relevantly said to be
bears" (the ones in the zoo only, for some reason), I want to talk
about the ones that do exist or have existed. How do I express my "all
bears", that is, "all bears that have, will, currently exist, in the
imagination, hypothetically, or otherwise", that is "X such that are
bears".



I will respond to the paragraph you indicate, but I will be repeating
myself:

> > > How would you say "let's talk about all bears that have ever existed"?
> >
> >   e'u mi'o casnu lo ro cribe poi pu ja ca zasti
>
> Not by your rules.

Yes, that's how I would say it.

> Here you are inviting me to talk, out of the bears
> that are in context, of the ones that have existed and exist.

Not the bears that are in context. All the things that can be relevantly
said to be a bear.


What's the difference between those "in context", and those
"relevantly said to be"?


There is an important difference there. Most things
that can be relevantly said to be bears, in most contexts, will not be
in the context.

> This is
> clearly inconsistent. When does {__ ro} refer to all bears?

When does "all bears" refer to all bears? Always.



The [lo ro cribe] in your example:


xu do pu viska [lo ro cribe] ca lo nu do vitke le dalpanka
Did you see all bears when you visited the zoo?


does not, by your ensuing description, refer to "all bears", it refers
to all bears at the zoo. I guess it's referring to "relevant bears",
the idea being that "all bears" (ever, hypothetical,...) aren't
relevant.


> When
> someone includes the word zasti after a poi? When all bears in context
> clearly already exist? "Aha, clearly he's not talking about all bears
> already in context, because I thought that they all exist... wait, was
> he talking about more than existing bears then"?

No, {lo ro cribe} is always "all bears", i.e. all the things that can relevantly
be said to be bears.

> And what if all bears
> in context don't exist now-before, and I want to suggest talking of
> the ones that do?

How can they not exist and yet exist?


My above bear-zoo example does a better job of saying what you just
responded to.



> Do the rules of Lojban change based on the context
> (all bears in context meet restrictions = new context, if they don't =
> modification of current context)?

Not sure what you mean by that. The universe of discourse is not
something fixed once and for all discourses, nor is it fixed once and
for all in a given discourse either. By its very definition it is molded
by the discourse itself as it evolves.



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